Microblogging in the Twitter-verse

This week opened up a whole new world for me. It has never occurred to me while exploring technology in an ESL classroom that Twitter could be wielded as a resource! How fascinating to participate in a "chat" with other teachers and professionals and exchange ideas and comments on a live feed. The chat is reminiscent of old AOL chat rooms but hosted once a week by topic hashtag. It is hosted for an hour per session with a prescribed topic related to second language acquisition.

I attended the #langchat session dedicated to circumlocution. In laymen's terms, getting students to use as many words to describe what they mean to say. Some attendees suggested playing games like "Taboo" or incorporating word webs. What I enjoyed the most was the sense of community or "we're in this together" feeling shared with the participants.

I believe these kinds of sessions would be helpful in generating ideas for possible teaching techniques. It is also a helpful resource for posting questions and getting answers from other professionals. It is another community resource that can definitely be useful for a budding ESL teacher like myself.

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